Intellectual property

Even before the World Trade Organization (WTO) lurched into its current state of crisis, bilateral FTAs had become a tool of choice for corporate and state interests seeking to expand intellectual property rights (IPR) standards. IPRs confer monopoly rights over intangible goods and services — methods of doing business on the internet, trademarks, computer programmes, designs, manufacturing processes, drug formulations or types of rice. They give IPR owners the right to prevent anyone from making or using their "creation". As such, they provide companies a direct tool to control a portion of the market, to block out competition and to fence off territories. Ironically, while IPR chapters are key aspects of many “free” trade and investment agreements, they are little more than protectionism for transnational corporations (TNCs), administered by governments. TNCs argue that without monopolies, there will be no innovation. Sharing should be banned; only capitalistic trade based on exclusive private property should be the norm.

Through FTAs, bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and other forms of direct agreements between countries, the US and Europe are insisting that the partner country adopt their standards of IPR protection and enforcement. This process has happened multilaterally via the WTO and the World Intellectual Property Organization. But it is now being pushed very aggressively through unilateral, bilateral and regional agreements — deals which go much further than the WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property rights (TRIPs). FTAs are setting “TRIPs-plus” standards.

The US imposes patents on plants and animals in its FTAs, while the EU and Japan, for the benefit of their biotech companies, push the UPOV Convention, a set of patent-like rules to prevent farmers from saving seeds. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical corporations have turned to FTAs as tools to impose stricter rules preventing the manufacture and trade of generic drugs. For many countries, and many peoples, these propositions are nothing short of revolutionary. Because it means they have to

extend protection for branded drugs and limit parallel imports, hampering the availability of affordable generic medicines start patenting plants and animals, which means farmers cannot save seed or reproduce fish breeds or livestock get rid of screen quotas that give preference to the showing of local films start patenting computer software, to the detriment of local programmers and the creative open source movements now mushrooming up across the world as a cheaper alternative to Microsoft extend copyright protection, which already causes serious problems for students, libraries and educational institutions clamp down on piracy of popular consumer goods like digital products, clothing and music make IPR infringements criminal offences, even though IPR is part of civil law
and the list goes on.

Through IPRs, corporations seek monopoly control over vast areas of life. They expect that we should all regularly pay them licenses to use their products and to reimburse their research and development costs. Never mind all the public subsidies, tax breaks, university contract labour and so on that go into their research and development in the first place. IPR laws being pushed through bilateral channels make it public policy that countries should protect the TNCs, the real pirates.

Because of the serious implications that ‘TRIPs-plus’ IPR chapters of FTAs have for broad cross-sections of societies, in some anti-FTA struggles, such as the fightback against the US-Thailand FTA, farmers and people living with HIV/AIDS have joined together in their opposition of this new threat to their survival. Concerns have also been raised about the way in which the EU’s EPAs include TRIPs-plus provisions, while Indigenous Peoples in many countries continue to assert alternative frameworks for the use and sharing of traditional knowledge that challenge the capitalist, commodified logic of “intellectual property rights” enshrined in free trade and investment agreements.

More recently, a new development in transnational IPR enforcement has sparked opposition and controversy, including major protests in many European cities. In October 2011, after a secretive negotiations process, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was signed by a number of countries and will come into effect once six countries have ratified it. ACTA would potentially set up a new international legal framework for enforcing IPR. Opponents have criticized the agreement’s impact on privacy, freedom of expression and internet freedoms, and generic drug manufacturing.

Articles

The move is certain to be closely watched by international lawyers and policymakers alike, as it will serve as an early test-case of the little-used intellectual property protections contained in BITs.

According to Latin American trade unions and organisations, patenting has had devastating consequences for biological diversity in several Latin American countries. Yet neither the patent rules proposed in the association agreement between the EU and Central America nor the bilateral trade negotiations taking place between the EU and Colombia and Peru have taken account of such criticism.

India and the US have signed two inter-governmental agreements on traditional knowledge, intellectual property and investment promotion during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s first state visit to the US.

American University Washington College of Law 4801 Massachusetts Ave., NW Washington DC 20016 November 5, 2009, 1-4pm, Room 603
More info and WEBCAST: wcl.american.edu/pijip Downloadable Flyer: wcl.american.edu/pijip/go/btflyer
PANEL 1 – Strengthening IP Enforcement Through TRIPS and Other Multilateral Initiatives
1:00 – 2:30
Moderator: Padideh Ala’i, Professor of Law & Acting Director, International Legal Studies Program at American University Washington College of Law
Panelists - (...)

The recent patenting of a Thai rice gene will pave the way for overseas firms to obtain copyrights of Thai biological and genetic resources, intellectual property rights experts and farmer advocates warn.

Bilateral free trade agreements can have a profound effect on national intellectual property legislation. A recent panel offered countries a deeper understanding of the stronger enforcement provisions typically found in such agreements.

Norway has resigned from the EFTA negotiations on intellectual property rights. The sole EFTA cooperation may now be in danger. “We have chosen to pull out of the negotiations. We have a different policy than the other EFTA countries in this area. This has not been problematic so far, but differences have crystallized during the negotiations with India”, says State Secretary Rikke Lind, Norway Ministry of Trade and Industry, to the New Time.

The Office of US Trade Representative (USTR), part of President Barack Obama’s office, has denied a company’s request for information about a secretive anticounterfeiting trade agreement being negotiated, citing national security concerns.

The Free Trade Agreement or the Association Agreement the European Union is promoting with two of the four countries member of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) risks the continuity of this bloc, but it also represents a threat to access to medications and health of the Andean peoples.

The United States has done it, and done it again. As part of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Peru, the US has managed to wrest an amendment in the existing Intellectual Property laws that virtually ’facilitates biopiracy and hamper Peru’s position as a protector of traditional knowledge,’ reports SciDev.net

IP Watch is a Geneva-based initiative to report on the interests and ‘behind the scenes’ dynamics which influence intellectual property policies, including those carried through bilateral and regional trade agreements.

8-Mar-2018People over Profit

Peoples movements, especially women, are enraged that the revived and rebranded CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership), an agreement set to trample on people’s rights, will be signed today, March 8, the very same day that is historically dedicated to honor the struggle of working class women against injustice and capitalist exploitation, and for the advancement of their rights.

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